Chapter Text
“Where do you want to go next?” Obi-Wan asked, his expression bright and open. Casually, as if he’d done this everyday, Obi-Wan caught Anakin’s hand in his own and twined their fingers together.
Anakin stared at his Master pensively, long enough that he knew it had grown strange. On a real mission, Obi-Wan would be berating him through the bond now, tugging him towards the steps they’d have to act out to pass as a real couple. If this was still practice, Obi-Wan would do the same. But their bond was silent, walled off on both ends. They were both carefully pretending it didn’t exist.
They were both carefully pretending they weren’t who they were.
Obi-Wan was still waiting, chin tilted up to meet Anakin’s eyes. Anakin raised their joined hands and hesitated before he could drop a kiss on Obi-Wan’s knuckles. His lips hovered over it awkwardly, caught between want and all the things they could never acknowledge.
“Ben,” Anakin said finally, the name still settling all wrong on his tongue after all this time, “if I tell you I want to go home, will you... will you come with me?”
Obi-Wan looked at him. The openness was gone – in its place, a careful blankness. He looked so much like his Jedi self, like Anakin’s Master, despite the loosely tied up hair and casual clothes, that Anakin automatically set his shoulders.
“You know I cannot,” Obi-Wan said softly. His voice was still the gentle, lilting intonation of Anakin’s fake lover, but his eyes had lost the warmth. He slipped his hand out of Anakin’s grasp.
Anakin allowed him to step away, jaw working. There was a torrent of words trapped behind his teeth, but he had already pushed far enough today. He glared at the ground.
“Go home, Ani,” Obi-Wan told him.
Anakin went home.
Slipping back into his Jedi tunics had felt strange the first few times, like he was stepping out into a different reality. Now it was just changing clothes. Anakin was still himself, whether his Padawan braid was tucked beneath the fall of ash blond synth-hair or not. He wondered if that meant he was getting better at assuming undercover personas, or if he was backsliding and getting worse.
Not that it mattered. It had stopped mattering since he learned what it felt like to run his hands through Obi-Wan’s hair, to have Obi-Wan tucked beneath his arm, to hold his hand.
He knew it hadn’t mattered to Obi-Wan in a while too.
“Ani,” Obi-Wan sighed, his head dipping down to lean against Anakin’s chest. “I missed you.”
Anakin wrapped careful arms around him. He could see, peeking out of the collar of Obi-Wan’s shirt, the edge of a bacta patch. One of many that lined his back. Anakin had placed them there himself, had ran his hand all along the length of Obi-Wan’s spine and watched him shiver and avoid his eyes.
“I missed you too,” Anakin said.
And he did. Oh, he did. Two months, Obi-Wan had been gone for two months while Anakin rattled around in the Temple doing coursework wondering if Obi-Wan was getting shot at or chased or captured without back-up. Two months, and Obi-Wan returned to him with gashes on his back and bruises on his ribs. Two months, and before that it had been careful distance, guarded glances, his Master’s cold, precise diction around the shape of his name.
Now Obi-Wan melted in his arms, words running together in exhaustion. He felt like spun sugar in Anakin’s hands.
“Ani,” Obi-Wan whispered.
“Hm?”
He felt the way Obi-Wan drew in a breath, as if to brace himself against something. Anakin caressed the back of his head, combing through his hair.
“Take me home?”
Anakin froze.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said. He hadn’t looked up. He was speaking against Anakin’s shirt, almost huddling in. “I took a speeder to get here, but I don’t think I can drive it back. I’ll get it tomorrow. But for now...”
“No! I mean,” Anakin winced, hand clasping on Obi-Wan’s nape when he tried to jerk away, “of course it’s alright, Ma – Ben. Ben. Yeah, I don’t mind at all.” He stepped back just enough to grab Obi-Wan’s wrist. “You can, um, you can point me to the right, uh, direction.”
Obi-Wan was silent for a long moment, and Anakin stood there stiffly. Waiting for Obi-Wan to pull away firmly, or take his words back, readying himself for an argument. But Obi-Wan only laughed faintly and said, “I think we’ve thoroughly broken it, Anakin.”
Anakin, said while Obi-Wan looked so soft and open. He felt dizzy, suddenly, and in his chest it felt like he’d just swallowed a star. But – “Broken?” he croaked.
“My fault,” Obi-Wan said immediately. “We’ll – “ he closed his eyes, pinched his brow, “we should... talk. Later.”
Obi-Wan’s shields were wavering. Anakin could sense his weariness, feel a faint echo of the various aches and pains in Obi-Wan’s body.
“I told you we can skip today,” Anakin couldn’t help but mutter, already dragging Obi-Wan to his speeder. This – Obi-Wan pushing himself past his limits, Anakin having to take care of him – felt familiar and comfortable. Whatever else was happening between them, this, at least, he could do as naturally as breathing.
“You said nothing of the sort,” Obi-Wan retorted. He followed Anakin amiably enough, and Anakin was careful to slow his pace so that his injured Master could match it comfortably.
“I said maybe you shouldn’t be moving around so much,” Anakin said. “That’s pretty much the same thing.”
Obi-Wan made a garbled little noise, something he would do when he didn’t want to agree but was too tired to continue an argument. Anakin glanced over at him, found his eyes to be worryingly unfocused. Medications, exhaustion, or a combination of the two? He folded so easily when Anakin arranged him as he liked in the speeder, and didn’t even say his customary warning when Anakin sat behind the wheel. Instead he nodded off as soon as they were in the air, and only stirred awake when Anakin slowed to a hovering stop underneath the Temple’s shadow.
“Not in the hangar?” Obi-Wan asked in confusion, after a bleary look around.
Anakin observed him, his familiar profile, a face he knew better than his own. He thought: tonight, he and Obi-Wan would shed their clothing at the same time, and wear their Jedi tunics at the same time, and throughout all of that they would still be the same people. The Obi-Wan that had leaned against him and burrowed into his arms was the same Obi-Wan that rebuked him sharply for losing his lightsaber, the same Obi-Wan that corrected his forms, the same Obi-Wan that he called Master. He had always known this, but the knowledge seemed to take on a different shape here. It made him feel braver.
“You said we were gonna talk.”
Obi-Wan looked weary. “Anakin – “
“I’m not,” Anakin interjected, so fast he was almost tripping over his words, “trying to start it now. Just. There’s something – I have to do it, so that whatever happens afterwards I won’t...”
He reached out for Obi-Wan’s hand. It felt like a Force-blessed miracle that Obi-Wan met it half-way, their fingers entwined.
“Please,” Anakin said, “Obi-Wan. Master. Can I kiss you?”
Obi-Wan’s expression spasmed into something like pain, but not quite. “Anakin...”
Anakin waited, heart pounding in his ears. Obi-Wan slowly raised his other hand, tracing a line up his jaw, behind his ear, unerringly finding the curled Padawan braid. And then his fingers drifted back, hovering over Anakin’s lips.
“You may,” Obi-Wan said softly.
Anakin did not waste time. He tilted Obi-Wan’s head just so, leaned in, and – Anakin had never kissed another person before, the first press of their lips clumsy, shy, but Obi-Wan made a punched-out sound and Anakin pressed closer for another try, bolder now, and another, and another, and another –
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan gasped.
Anakin quickly backed off, lips still tingling. “Obi-Wan.” Their hands were still intertwined. He couldn’t help it. He pressed kisses all over Obi-Wan’s knuckles, his fingers. “Thank you, Master. Thank you.”
I love you, he couldn’t say.
Not yet.